Like a shadow

"It doesn't look good" Ichigo muttered as he saw the gigai green skin. The kunai of the fight had been poisoned and now his fake body was dying. Chad had used the shinigami badge to free Ichigo and the soul reaper found himself just a little dizzy after that "Will not come back to it"

"It will die" Chad said as he scanned the empty room and the beeping machine keeping the gigai alive. As much as a soulelss shell could be.

"Ah! This is not good! Do you think I should go to Aizen? I think he had another gigai ready, but how will I explain this? And then Aizen would want to have the gigai! Uff! Any ideas?"

Chad sighed before muttering a low no.

"Who are ya talkin with?" KillerB entered the room and watched the room, his shades hiding his eyes, Ichigo wasn't sure what they were looking at. Finally the ninja walked towards Ichigo gigai "I'm sorry, buddy, but don't worry! My bros are working at it...His stats don't look good"

KillerB pursed his lips and turned to face Chad with lowered shoulders.

"Do you trust us?" Chad asked softly, one of his eyes showing below his long hair. The ninja nodded and Ichigo's friend decided it was time for risking all for all "There is a powerful healer, a friend of us, that can fix Ichigo. But I need to carry his body away from here, our friend is far away"

The ninja crossed his arms and nodded in agreement "You are asking me to let you go even if you two are now ninjas of this village..Will you come back?"

"Yes"

"Then, just return, the two of you, alive, I will arrange it for this night. Don't let brother know, would ya?"

Chad raised a thumb up.

.

Naruto sat on the swing, looking at the other kids, all of them surrounded by their parents. They looked proud and accomplished, eager to face the future. So much unlike him.

Even after someone had believed in him, Naruto had been unable to succed. As he watched all the people, he wasn't sure if the lump on his throat was because Aizen was absent or because he was grateful the man wasn't there to witness Naruto fail.

He decided that being there, in front of the school, was annoying and got up without minding the parents whispers. He began to walk towards his empty house in slow steps, feeling defeated.

"Naruto!" Misaki, one of the two senseis of his class stopped him at half of the way, his smile was kind and he had a soft aura around him "Do you want to know something... It's a secret exam to become a ninja"

The last sentence was said lowly and the boy felt that the tone was perfect for the occasion. It sounded as a real ninja mission.

After Misaki-sensei told him the instructions, Naruto began to run towards the Third Hokage house, the old man wouldn't expect Naruto to pull his secret perverted jutsu, and with that he would "steal" a scroll and learn a technique like no other and then he would become a real ninja.

In the way to the Hokage house he saw Sasuke, the other orphan of his class. The boy was walking slowly. For a second Naruto thought to stop and congrulate him, after all the Uchiha had an empy house too, but he fastly got rid of the idea. Sasuke was super popular and loved by everyone, probably Naruto would look as one of his fangirls and honestly, the other boy was overrated.

Sasuke just stared at the back of Naruto when the blond boy passed him and continued his travel.

Uryu shivered as he passed the Uchiha compound doors. It was almost at the outskirts of the city and the quincy had never seen any soul in there. Even worst, the place had a dark aura that prickled on his skin. He had never entered the gloomy place, but the pharmacy of the Civil Hospital was almost always runing out of medicine and a drugstore near the compound had discounts for the Hospital.

He didn't like to be the errand boy either, nevertheless there was no one else who could do it. Or more accurately, it was for the best he did that. In secret, Aizen and him were studying the medicine, and the system of buying them at evening, studying some of them at night, and delivering the left overs in the morning had worked good so far.

Still, as he stared at the inside, he could feel something akin to bound spirits suffering, there was no one of course. Whatever dynamic there was in the magic Ninja world, neither pluses or hollows could form outside their material body.

"Move out" a young teen with dark hair demanded out of nowhere and Uryu raised an eyebrow in confusion as his eyes falled on a raven haired teen "You are in the middle of the entrance"

Uryu looked at the Uchiha's door and then at the boy. He had heard there was a young prodigy that was an Uchiha, Sasuke. But the place looked very dark and desertic, so the quincy had believed no one lived there and the prodigy was in another complex.

He step out without saying a word but before he could walk away the kid clenched his hands and turned to face Uryu with open hate.

"The Uchiha's compound isn't an amusement park!" Sasuke said that with a voice that tried to be even but failed spectacularly. The quincy was too old for getting mad at kids mood swings so he shughred dismissively.

"I'm out of your way, you can go inside" Uryu said in a mooking voice but something in the black eyes of the kid made him change his tone "You don't want to go inside, do you?"

Sasuke stared at him hardly, almost emanating his hatred out of his body. It was sad to see. If there were ghosts, Uryu was sure they would had been crying for the child. Uryu almost could hear them and out of habit his eyes went to the dark place, searching people that weren't there.

"What are you staring at?!" Sasuke snapped Uryu out of the soundless cries and the quincy found himself watching the boy again. The kid was grinning bitterly but his voice was calm as he spoke again "There is no one inside"

"I noticed. Not even a ghost"

The Uchiha raised an eyebrow at the commentary but just in case checked inside with his eyes. Uryu wondered if he lived there all alone and why.

"I'm the last Uchiha, as I'm out, it's obvious no one would be there" the boy said in an iron tone, trying to keep his resentment at bay with more success than the first time.

"The last?"

"So, you aren't from here" the boy sighed and hid his hands on the pockets of his shorts "I'm the last Uchiha" that explained a lot.

"I'm kind of the last too" Uryu knew he was being to open, probably the place was taking its toll on him because his normal rieishi absorption was playing against him, even without form spiritual energy could have something that tasted as feelings, if feelings had any taste. Uryu decided to keep talking even after realizing that "My family had something like blood technique too. Now, there a just two of us left"

"Two?" The boy asked aphrensive, but he was looking at Ishida with a new found interest.

"My father. The rest are dead" and their king was planning to destroy the world.

"Hmm...The other of my kind..He is a man that I must murder" Sasuke eyes were hard and full of bitterness, but the boy reminded himself and changed of theme "Your abbility, what does it do? Does it let you see ghosts and you are a sort of priest?"

"Kind of" Uryu adjusted his glasses "If you want, I can make some charms for this place. I sense people suffering, not their ghosts, more like shadows, but I think there is something that can be done"

"And how expensive that would be?"

Uryu had talked with enough people and Aizen was very talkative, so the quincy knew that people believes in the afterlife were almost the same as in the real world, which meant that the boy was in enough dispair and grieve to believe in spirits and want to help them. He was trying to keep the last remains of people long go.

"Nothing" Uryu thoughts drifted towards Ichigo, Orihime and Chad, they would help whatever being that was suffering in the compound, and Uryu wanted to be like them with all his heart "From the Last to the Last, it's completely free"

Sasuke blinked and nodded "When? I will kind of be busy next week"

"Two days after this, at the evening"

Sosuke Aizen nodded off in his hospital office. In the short time he had worked in the place he had gone really far, he was good at making diagnosis and his patients loved his gentle aura.

The paperwork was always finished on time, the recommended books were read fastly and he had all his appointments arranged without problem. Reliable, smart and kind, all the time acting as the perfect man made everyone believe he was perfect.

He had sabotaged himself again.

In Soul Society he had been pretty efficient, and any moment when he acted out of character had people noticing it fastly and he had put his plans on hold just to finish the assignments with the perfection expected of him. And that meant that more works were encomended to his squad, because he was just that amazing.

Sosuke looked at the folders on his desk and began to read again. A patient with high leucocyte count and another that had deficiencies of magnesium.

Before he could read more details, he felt a ninja walking towards his office. The downside of having a gigai that let him walk around sick people was that his senses were dulled, but he needed the village at peace and producing without problem. The materials he needed for dimension travel wouldn't make themselves.

"Doctor Aizen?" A man with the regular ninja uniform and a headband covering almost all his brown hair asked from the open door "May I speak with you?"

"Yes, come in" Aizen closed the folders and stared at the man black eyes. It was unerving to know the human wasn't faking his manners even if he would go to Aizen neck without a single reserve and without any warning. Aizen had a facade to keep after all.

Either way, Sosuke would deal with the ninja.

"Am I right if I say that Naruto Uzumaki is an aquantice of yours?" The man asked in a clipped voice.

"You know I haven't seen him in a while. Did something happen to him?" Sosuke said everything in a secure voice. The man blinked once and Aizen talked again "What did he do?"

"Just his regular pranks, if you see him, you must inform about it immediately"

"Of course, I will do it" the ninja went away after a small bow and Sosuke decided to go back to work. He wouldn't side track musing about ninja affairs. Not until he did more research on their bodies.

Far away, in the forest, Naruto was running among the tress, trying to put distance between him and his hunter. He would had keep his run but words arrived to his ears and he stopped as them were creamed again.

"You are the Kyube!"

Naruto heard the words and turned around to face his enemy.

Just a little while ago, he had completed the mission of stealing the scroll and had even practiced a technique called Shadow Clone, or Kage Bunshin, he had believed he was nearer to be recognized as a real ninja of Konoha, instead, Misaki-sensei had apparaed and without warning had trow a kunai to Naruto head.

The boy had evaded it and ran away in confusion, that was until Misaki-sensei uttered those words and Naruto halted, prey of his burning emotions.

That explained a lot. In the worst possible ways.

He wasn't human. That's was the reason everyone hated him, just the murderer fox in human skin, was that? Didn't he deserve to live then?

Misaki aimed four kunais at Naruto as answer and the young teen had to put his arm to shield his head of three of them, the other one hit his leg. The pain didn't register, it was unamtering for his mind that was just swimming in questions.

His mind remembered the other kids could shoulders, the Hokage silence, the teachers eyes of disdain and the villagers hatred towards him. All because he was the Kyube, it should be a joke.

He looked at the blood ozooning from his arm, and he felt tears forming on his eyes as something warm travelled on his throat and he found himself grinning bitterly. It was funny to think that just a few weeks ago the most harm he had got was a deep cut of a kunai in all the fingers of his right hand.

"You are injured" Aizen had told him when he saw blood stains "Let me check"

Naruto had ignored the injury half of the day, and had put a gauntlet to hide it from Aizen. They had kind of closed but reopened when Naruto moved his hand a little.

"It's not that deep, I can attend it here, it would be a shame if your calligraphy lessons are stopped by something like this, wouldn't it?" Aizen cleaned the injury and hold the injured hand between his after stopping the bleeding and putting bandages around the fingers. Aizen hands were warm.

Naruro blinked as he felt his warm blood on his gut and looked down to see a kunai incrusted on it. He removed it fastly, he still had calligraphy lessons to do and he would become a Hokage. His eyes were still crying as he gritted his teeth, ready to fight for his future.

"Kage Bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto made a cross with the fingers of both hands and a horde of clones apparaed just as Iruka-sensei jumped into the scene, watching everything with wide eyes, but the boy just had someone in his sight "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I will be Hokage! You jerk!"

to be continued